Love, Grief & More Sex Than Pinot

Chapter 44

Sat 14th Feb 2015: Happy Fucking Valentine’s Day

1,073 Days, 2,041 Bottles of Pinot Grigio, 442 Grams of Coke, 95 Ecstasy Pills, and 172 Random Shags Trying to Find Mr Right Since Mum Died (What The Actual FUCK?!)

So, here we are again: the dreaded Valentine’s Day. Invented, no doubt, by smug couples and greedy card companies working together in a conspiracy to make us singletons squirm in our seats. It’s the one day of the year when being single feels like some kind of social offence, as suddenly every restaurant table is set for two and every shop window is dressed in red and pink hearts and fluffy teddy bears. It’s not that I’m bitter (okay, I’m very fucking bitter), but must love be shoved so aggressively down my throat like a spiky red rose I could gag on?

Post my Jan detox (which went terribly) and firmly back in full drinking mode following my birthday drinks last week — cheers to 26 years on Planet Earth —I’ve been panic-hunting a soulmate for the past two weeks so I can say ‘I do’ over a heart-shaped pizza. 

First, it was sweet, shy, and charmingly clueless Patrick, a 20-year-old paralegal on work experience from Ireland, whom I met in the pub next door to my office. As Patrick and I got chatting, I pictured our Irish wedding: fiddles playing something joyous and impossibly fast, pints of Guinness flowing like a national treasure, and me swishing around in a dramatic veil that caught the wind just right. At last orders, Patrick was keen to accept my invitation to carry on the party back at mine, and so I pushed aside my New Year’s resolution to avoid one-night stands. But as for a cheeky game of hide the sausage? Forget it. Poor Patrick’s willy had serious stage fright. Nothing. Not even a polite nod of interest. And yet, if he’d woken up, looked me in the eyes and said, Morning Soho, will you marry me? I would’ve screamed a great big, glitter-covered YES!

Next was Gabriel, a 38-year-old accountant on a work conference from Geneva, whom I clocked at 2 am in a cheesy city nightclub, drunkenly dancing and singing his heart out to ‘Don’t Stop Believin’ by Journey. Regardless of him being a dishevelled, drunken mess with a token bit of vomit on his shoe, being the only bloke left, and with Valentine’s Day fast approaching, was it any wonder we pulled? No! Given I was inebriated, most likely with a little bit of vomit on my shoe too, I took his declaration that he was single as gospel and didn’t think to check his back pocket for a wedding ring. And after our impromptu one-nighter? If he’d rolled over, kissed my forehead and whispered, Morning, Soho, will you marry me? I’d have shouted a big, euphoric YES!

And my final attempt at Valentine’s love? Well, it was 1 am on the Tube home from my so-called birthday brunch last Saturday, which, in reality, was a 14-hour wine-fuelled bender featuring two and a half bottles of pinot grigio and three-quarters of a gram of coke. So much for my New Year’s resolution to behave like a grown-up. Somewhere on the Tube between Brixton and Clapham, I found myself drunkenly chatting to a chap called Liam, a very handsome, tattoo-covered, 30-year-old who looked like a rock star, in ripped denim jeans and a black leather jacket. It was only later that I found out he was the manager of a Brixton strip club called Naughty Nights. 

The next morning, I woke up to him blinking groggily at me, clutching his head and muttering, ‘Morning… er… fuck, this is really embarrassing… what’s your name?’ If he’d followed that up with Well, whatever your name is, will you marry me? My answer would have been a wholehearted YES!

I miss Mum terribly, and I’m lonely. I don’t want to keep crying into tubs of Ben & Jerry’s or staging romantic dinners with my houseplants.

Grrr… I must try to get a hobby that doesn’t involve drinking and chasing love.

Happy fucking Valentine’s Day.